4 ms·

I’m quite involved in the Ed tech space and unfortunately it’s an environment where a lot of times it’s more expensive to be poor.

by awat 6y ago

judge2020 6y ago
That's true in general as almost all products have a flat cost rather than charging you a percentage of your income.
- freedomben 6y ago
  It's deeper than that. Being poor often means you can't buy in quantity, and most things are cheaper in bulk. If you have to buy one can of soda for example, you're looking at $0.75 USD. If you can afford a little more, you can buy a 12-pack for $3.99 USD. Or look at buying a home. In Utah the mortgage on a house is typically much lower than the corresponding rent would be, plus you build equity. However if you don't have the down payment or the credit to buy, then you have to rent. Your rent will be say $1,500/mo where as the corresponding mortgage would have been $1,100. It actually costs more for your housing because you are poor. Whenever I say it's expensive to be poor, that's the kind of stuff I mean. Your options are just far more limited, in a way that makes it difficult to get a good deal.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    So not only more expensive proportionally, but more expensive absolutely.
  - awat 6y ago
    Absolutely, referring to schools in Utah and this is exactly it. The buyer/user/student is penalized for the lack of upfront capital and generally the business model is more aggressive because they don’t have the ability to use capital to escape it.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
One of my first jobs was for a k12 district of 4 schools. I was the sole sysadmin for around 1600 users and had to justify any spend to the school board and the PTO, so my decisions were usually based on 1) can I fit this into my very limited time and 2) can I get a grant or significant EDU discount for this. Usually only commercial stuff targeting EDU (like Microsoft at the time) was what I could get. It's no wonder Google has taken over. Single pane of glass for everything, almost fully automated, much more bulletproof than anything else available. I would have killed for that 15 years ago. Of course, at that time everything was in 'computer labs' and things werent really that bad since the machines were always available on wired connections. Doing a 1:1 deployment to that many people as a soloist with crappy mid-aughts wifi and windows XP would have been a completely different ballgame.

I’m quite involved in the Ed tech space and unfortunately it’s an environment where a lot of times it’s more expensive to be poor.

by awat 6y ago

I’m quite involved in the Ed tech space and unfortunately it’s an environment where a lot of times it’s more expensive to be poor.

judge2020 6y ago

That's true in general as almost all products have a flat cost rather than charging you a percentage of your income.

freedomben 6y ago
It's deeper than that. Being poor often means you can't buy in quantity, and most things are cheaper in bulk. If you have to buy one can of soda for example, you're looking at $0.75 USD. If you can afford a little more, you can buy a 12-pack for $3.99 USD. Or look at buying a home. In Utah the mortgage on a house is typically much lower than the corresponding rent would be, plus you build equity. However if you don't have the down payment or the credit to buy, then you have to rent. Your rent will be say $1,500/mo where as the corresponding mortgage would have been $1,100. It actually costs more for your housing because you are poor. Whenever I say it's expensive to be poor, that's the kind of stuff I mean. Your options are just far more limited, in a way that makes it difficult to get a good deal.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  So not only more expensive proportionally, but more expensive absolutely.
- awat 6y ago
  Absolutely, referring to schools in Utah and this is exactly it. The buyer/user/student is penalized for the lack of upfront capital and generally the business model is more aggressive because they don’t have the ability to use capital to escape it.

jabroni_salad 6y ago

One of my first jobs was for a k12 district of 4 schools. I was the sole sysadmin for around 1600 users and had to justify any spend to the school board and the PTO, so my decisions were usually based on 1) can I fit this into my very limited time and 2) can I get a grant or significant EDU discount for this. Usually only commercial stuff targeting EDU (like Microsoft at the time) was what I could get. It's no wonder Google has taken over. Single pane of glass for everything, almost fully automated, much more bulletproof than anything else available. I would have killed for that 15 years ago. Of course, at that time everything was in 'computer labs' and things werent really that bad since the machines were always available on wired connections. Doing a 1:1 deployment to that many people as a soloist with crappy mid-aughts wifi and windows XP would have been a completely different ballgame.